I move:—
In sub-section (1), line 40, to delete the words "sixty-five" and substitute therefor the word "sixty."
As members of the House know, this is the most important section of this Bill. It deals with the cases of 24,000 non-judicial tenants who still remain to be vested. In to-day's "Independent" there is a letter from Mr. Mansfield, who has studied this question of land finance. Arising out of that letter, I should like to ask the Parliamentary Secretary some questions. In the first place, could he tell us what the average purchase price was in connection with the cases in which judicial rents have been fixed or have been agreed upon? Mr. Mansfield states in his letter, and I find the data are taken from the official report of the Land Commission, that in connection with fee farm grants the price of redemption is 18.6 years' purchase. although the inclusive price in the Act is 15.05 or 16.21 years' purchase. according as you take the rents fixed before or after the 15th August, 1911. I just raise that question because, at the very outset, we are met with the consideration in connection with Section 2 of the Bill whether the purchase annuity really affects the burden of the tenant. It may affect the manner in which the burden falls upon the tenant. What I want to get at is will the fixing of the standard purchase annuities in this section have any influence on the purchase price? I take it that it will not—none whatever. It does not matter very much then what the tenant is going to pay yearly. His purchase price will still be fixed, and whether he pays 60 or 65 per cent., in my opinion, does not matter, because there will be the purchase price fixed in any case, and that purchase price will have to be redeemed.
The total amount that the tenant will have to pay in a particular year, although it may affect him in the bigger reduction, would of course be to the tenant's benefit. But it does not affect the purchase price. Therefore I think that that is an argument in favour of my amendment. The experience of Land Commission officials and the experience of an inspector of the Land Commission now out on pension is that fixing it at 60 would be a reasonable price. The Parliamentary Secretary in taking the figure 65 has told us that that is the average of the annuities that have been fixed up to the present. But there are two considerations in connection with that. The first is that as to those annuities, as Mr. Mansfield points out in his letter, the fixing of the figure at 65 would seem to affect the poorer districts more than it would affect the wealthier districts.
On page 46 of the Official Report of the Land Commission, it is stated that the average reduction in respect of annuities fixed, that is, fixed by the Land Commission or fixed by the Judicial Commissioner, comes in the case of Connaught to 39.5 per cent. and Munster, 38.9; so that although the general average is somewhat lower in the case of these two provinces it is considerably more than the 35 per cent. In Leinster the average is lower—34.7 per cent. In the case of Carlow, my own constituency, the percentage is 38 and in Leix it is 39. In Longford, it goes up to 45. That fact that in Longford it goes to 45 seems to show that 60 is not enough for the poorer districts and seems to bear out Mr. Mansfield's contention. I have not any facts in support of this statement that the non-judicial tenants are the poorer class but it is a fact that their acreage is small and the average rental of the non-judicial tenant is £11.
The effect of my amendment will be to give them an additional decrease of 1/- in the £1 as compared with what the Parliamentary Secretary suggests. I do not see how the State is to lose because the purchase price of the annuities will still be the same. It is merely that the yearly payment will be slightly reduced. There has been a campaign throughout the country to have even that much granted to the tenant and to have the period for the repayment extended. Here we have an opportunity of extending the period and making the annuity as low as possible.
Another matter that I want to refer to is in connection with sub-section (2). The Parliamentary Secretary may say that if his figure of 65 is not accepted that it will mean a large amount of litigation. Well, the fact that you fix it at 65, or in fact at any other figure, does not seem to prove that you would in any way affect the amount of litigation. The right is still there in sub-section (2) to the landlord or the tenant to come into court. Either one or the other can come into court. But if it is a case of coming into court, we say let the landlord come into court, and let us see that it will be the landlord who will have to come into court. We can do that by fixing the price at 60. Let us give a definite margin in favour of the tenant.
One further argument in favour of it is the history of the non-judicial rents. The people who are called judicial tenants at present had their rents reduced at various periods under the Land Purchase Acts. First, they got a reduction of their rents of 21 per cent. That was for the first term. In the second term rents the reduction roughly was 18 per cent. After they got these reductions, which reduced their old rents to 79 per cent. or 82 per cent., the 1923 Land Act gave them a further reduction of 35 per cent. That means that these tenants who had the good fortune to have judicial rents fixed have got a total reduction of either 56 per cent. or 53 per cent. on their old judicial rents. A great many of them have been vested and they have had the benefit of paying off the purchase price.
Those tenants who have been left to the very end and whose cases have presented a special difficulty are the non-judicial tenants. There is no proof that they are going to be vested within the next twelve months, and that they are going to have the satisfaction of paying off the purchase price by their annuity. Those tenants are now in the position that they are only to get 35 per cent. of a reduction, whereas the judicial tenants had a reduction of over 50 per cent. I would like to hear what the Parliamentary Secretary has to say to that.
